Increase the Awareness of Chronic Kidney Disease
What is Chronic Kidney Disease?
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a progressive loss in kidney function. Every kidney has about a million tiny filters, which are nephrons. At the initial stage, healthy nephrons will take on the extra work when some nephrons are damaged. But if the damage continues, more and more nephrons shut down and even stop filtering blood effectively so that patients’ health will be affected. To be worse, kidney function falls below a certain point, which is kidney failure. Kidney failure, which can be life-threatening, has a more significant influence on the patient. CKD might lead to complications including high blood pressure, anemia, and heart and blood vessel disease.
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A proper diet and medications help to maintain the critical balances in the body. But if patients have kidney failure, dialysis treatments to remove wastes and excess fluids accumulated in patient’s body. Dialysis can be divided into hemodialysis (patient’s blood is cleaned by machine) and peritoneal dialysis (the blood is cleaned while still inside patient’s body by adding clean fluid to patient’s abdomen).
Kidney transplant is to place a healthy kidney in a patient’s body to perform the functions patient own diseased kidneys can no longer perform. Kidney transplantation is the best treatment for severe CKD patients as this treatment provides better quality of life and survival rate than dialysis. However, lack of donated organs is the main concern. Lots of candidates for kidney transplantation are put on a transplant waiting list and require dialysis until an organ is available.
As there is no cure for chronic kidney disease, prevention is of great importance. Drink alcohol in moderation, follow instructions on over-the-counter medications, have healthy diet and maintain a healthy weight and quit smoking are ways to reduce the risk of chronic kidney